From Farmers to Mariners: Understanding Connectivity in the Northern Bay of Bengal Region (c.1000 BCE- C. 300 CE)

Kaushik Gangopadhyay

The communities in the Northern Bay of Bengal region (Odisha, Bengal and Myanmar), between c. 1000 BCE to 300 C.E transformed from simple farming villages to trading nodes. The archaeological data, however, needs to be critically understood for a nuanced discourse on the nature and scale of this transformation. Although the region is presently fragmented into different political entities, in the past there were common elements such as rice farming, languages and even pottery production techniques. Archaeological data, during this period, also point towards interactions and connectivity by mapping distribution and trade of objects in the region including stone and glass beads, cowrie shells and metals. The major gap in our knowledge pertains to the processes through which coastal farmers transformed into mariners; transporting knowledge of the land towards the sea thereby altering the early history of the Northern Bay of Bengal region. Although, we lack direct data such as shipwrecks, the available archaeological data if synthesized is expected to provide a view of these processes. Connectivity, I propose, was one of the major elements in this transformation.